[AZ-Observing] A night of DSO Challenges...

Another night spent running visually with my 18" Deep Violet, the 
program was to observe a wide array of miscellaneous objects I had 
entered into my observing database over the last year but had not yet 
observed.  This includes a lot of odd globulars, open clusters, dark 
nebulae and other odds and ends.

A beautiful and cloud free night in SE New Mexico, conditions were 
fairly good, with good transparency but medium seeing as the temperature 
fluctuated through the night.  A very pleasant night spent under a very 
dark sky, with some frustration as I tried to locate some more 
challenging objects...

Dolidze 27 - Large, loose, a poor cluster of about a dozen stars in a 
distinct grouping, but still a poor object

Palomar 14 - Located the star pattern matching the DSS image, nothing 
can be seen, conditions decent tonight, but just can not see it

IC4846 - Tough to locate, stellar at medium and high power, only located 
by matching DSS star pattern, stellar with no visible shell or nebula

NGC6231 - Brilliant cluster near the bottom of Scorpio, naked eye 
object, rich, bright, dominated by a handful of 6th magnitude stars, 
well over a hundred members scattered in a 15' area

Trumpler 24 - Large, rich, a naked eye object visible as a glow above 
NGC6231, fills the field at 60x (>1degree) the whole complex gives the 
impression of a comet low on the horizon below Scorpio with NGC6231 as 
the coma and Trumpler 24 the tail

Markarian 38 - A very small 2' triangle of stars dominated by one bright 
7 mag. star, a faint glow of unresolved stars or nebula fills the triangle

NGC6760 Small, unresolved, a circular hazy patch about 8' in diameter 
with stars just beginning to resolve with averted vision

NGC6749 = Berkeley 42 - Dim!! a very faint patch of unresolved haze 
about 5' in diameter, it was necessary to match up the star pattern with 
the chart to find it at all, averted vision and rocking the scope help

Berkeley 43 - Very faint, an unresolved hazy patch 5' in diameter, it 
was necessary to match up the starfield with the DSS before object could 
be located

Not all of the objects I looked for tonight were as challenging as some 
of these, I looked at a bunch of old favorites as well.  Last object of 
the night was 73P/S-W, still sporting a small tail as it begins to 
compete with the first light of dawn.

Andrew

Andrew Cooper
----------------------------------------------------
http://www.siowl.com



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